Reviews

Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

The weaknesses of the new game's controls show themselves in some of the new playable characters. Some, like Penelope, the RC expert, handle okay, but that's mainly because of using her in lots of RC missions. The ability to finally play as longtime Cooper Gang rival Carmelita Fox, while tolerable, feels slightly tepid and lacks the pizzazz of being Sly, Bentley, or Murray, perhaps due to the sometimes-awkward targeting system. Others, like the Guru, who can't fight but can possess guards, aren't that much fun, simply due to the unwieldiness of the controls. The minute he hops into a guard's mind and rides them like a horse, they're running at full speed ahead, which is aggravating when a mission demands a hair more precision than "possess a guard and run him into a wall." Previous villain Panda King is fairly fun, however; with his ability to send off a barrage of fireworks at enemies, it reminded me strangely of a mech game's burst radius of heat-seeking missiles a la Zone of the Enders. Ultimately, the new playable characters are a mixed bag of sorts.

Sly 3 certainly introduces more gameplay elements into the mix. The mini-games are back in full swing. The old-school style hacking mini-game is back with some new difficulty thrown into the mix, as are a ton of new ones that can be unlocked for multiplayer, such as dogfighting. It might not be Crimson Skies, but it's pretty fun. Others just don't feel as fun, in part, because they feel like afterthoughts (the security system in the Holland level comes to mind most quickly), and the emphasis on mini-games at times feels like it overpowers the main reason why most people play Sly Cooper: its excellent platforming. On the same token, though, mini-games such as the amazing pirate ship on the Caribbean episode are lots of fun and truly show off the beauty of the game's level design. Ultimately, it seems as though Sucker Punch would have been better off paring down the excessive diversions from platforming to keep the quality at an overall high rather than throwing in everything conceivably possible just because it could.

Visually, the game looks utterly amazing. The visual detail for Sly has been punched up dramatically, and it shows from the first mission. The worlds are as expansive as Sly 2, but a little easier to navigate in some regards. Whereas I once found myself wandering for 45 minutes around the India level in Sly 2 looking for a route to my map point, most of the map points in Sly 3 are straightforward and not overly difficult to find. It's when you reach a mission that some of the trouble begins.

Bad camera angles, which didn't seem to be as much of an issue in Sly 2, plague this game in some points. On several occasions, a task which would have been simple in the previous title, such as a fight with a mini-boss, a few simple platform jumps, or even a boss battle, are made more difficult by the camera. For some reason, a task as simple as repeatedly throwing an enemy at a giant drill bit, becomes a tedious chore thanks to bad camera angles causing redundant gameplay. Sometimes, the game is more challenging than Sly 2, but that's in part because the camera is so mediocre at some points.